Re: captions accessibility with screen readers.

I recently advised to toggle the value aria-live="none" to aria-live="assertive" in sync with the button that activates captions within a video player.
Since the captioning is time-sensitive, we recommended assertive.
The user is in control and the default setting is off.
Spoken captions (or subtitles) are useful when the language is foreign and the captions/subtitles are not.

Kind regards,

Gijs

> On 17 Dec 2018, at 14:11, Bim Egan <bim.egan1@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I strongly disagree. trying to use any alert to force captions to be announced through screenreaders is likely to do more harm than good. Captions are for people with hearing disabilities. If screenreaders can't avoid announcing them, their users would be subjected to the synthetic voice speaking over the audio track.  
>  
> I can see a use case for where text is only visually displayed or an informative image is used without narration, but the caption isn't the right mechanism for this, a more appropriate solution would be an audio description. 
>  
> As it is, some screenreader browser combinations or particular implementations of video players do set the screenreader announcing captions or alternatively giving a running update of the current position, both of which are extremely distracting and make the video less, not more informative and enjoyable. 
>  
> Bim
>  
> -------------
> Bim Egan
> Partner: AccessEquals
> W: www.accessequals.com <http://www.accessequals.com/>
> E: bim.egan@accessequals.com <mailto:bim.egan@accessequals.com>
>  
> 
> From: Nigel Megitt [mailto:nigel.megitt@bbc.co.uk] 
> Sent: 17 December 2018 11:30
> To: Sean Murphy (seanmmur)
> Cc: W3C WAI ig
> Subject: Re: captions accessibility with screen readers.
> 
> Yes they should, in my opinion, role=“alert” aria-live="assertive”.  If you’re watching video with captions, you’re probably not interacting with the rest of the page so much. However I can see that there may be a case here for changing this depending on whether the video is full screen or not. Certainly in the case of a page with a whole bunch of captioned videos, if more than one is playing simultaneously, this would be a usability nightmare (think social media pages with lots of videos embedded), so something more subdued is needed. I don’t think I’ve seen a UX pattern for this that really works yet, but I’d like to learn more about how this might be possible.
> 
> 
>> On 17 Dec 2018, at 04:49, Sean Murphy (seanmmur) <seanmmur@cisco.com <mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Thoughts from the wider community.
>> I am wanting to bounce something off the community in relation to accessible media controls. Should the captions be accessible to a screen reader? When the caption is, the useability of the web page and general usage suffers due to much information. 
>> So should the captions be accessible by a screen reader? If so, what ARIA property should be used? As ARIA-live=”polite” is to verbose.
>> <image001.png>
>> Sean Murphy
>> SR ENGINEER.SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
>> seanmmur@cisco.com <mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>
>> Tel: +61 2 8446 7751 <tel:+61%202%208446%207751>
>> Cisco Systems, Inc.
>> The Forum 201 Pacific Highway
>> ST LEONARDS
>> 2065
>> Australia
>> cisco.com <http://cisco.com/>
>> <image002.gif>
>> Think before you print.
>> This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, use, distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the recipient), please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message.
>> Please click here <http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/legal/terms-sale-software-license-agreement/company-registration-information.html> for Company Registration Information.
> 
> 
>  
> ----------------------------
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk <http://www.bbc.co.uk/>
> This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
> If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
> Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
> Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
> Further communication will signify your consent to this.
> 
> ---------------------
> 
> 
>  <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> Virus-free. www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>